


won't you warm my bones within

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:45:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4736516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days after the berserker staff incident, Ward feels the need to make amends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	won't you warm my bones within

**Author's Note:**

> I'm behind on comments because I'm the worst, so sorry! I'll try to get those answered tonight, but no promises.
> 
> This fic is actually a sequel to a fic that I've been writing for months and haven't managed to finish yet. Oops. That fic will probably end up being posted as a prequel eventually, so...yeah. *shrug* What can I say, the muse does what it wants.
> 
> Title from Halsey's _Tilt You Back_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

Sharing a bathroom with five other people does have its disadvantages—quite a few of them, even. One of which is the impossibility of lingering in the shower; if one goes over their allotted time by so much as five seconds, there will be pounding on the door and accusations of _hogging_ and, depending on how early the day starts, perhaps even threats of violence.

For this reason, Jemma is happy to wait until most of the team has left the Bus to take her shower.

It’s lovely. She lingers for ages, until she’s warmed all the way through and her skin has gone pruney, and she doesn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt. The only other person on the Bus is Ward, and as he’s been avoiding her since—well, since what happened—she doesn’t need to worry about him interrupting.

With that in mind, she even decides to take the time to dry her hair. Since starting this assignment, she’s been forced to use one of the storage pods, which she and Skye have rigged up with a slightly crooked mirror, for the primping portion of her daily routine. It works well enough, but the cargo hold is freezing, and she hates wandering down there with wet hair.

So, once her shower is complete, she wraps herself in her towel, pulls her brush and her hair dryer out of her bag, and gets to work in front of the bathroom mirror.

She lets her mind drift as she does, considering the various ways she might spend this unprecedented day off—Fitz left with the rest of the team, so she’ll have the lab to herself. She hasn’t yet finished her analysis of Ward and May’s various blood samples, and she really should get that done, but she managed to talk Elliot Randolph out of a tiny blood sample before they dropped him off, and the _possibilities_ —!

Between the sound of her hair dryer and her wandering thoughts, she doesn’t hear the door open. It’s only the sudden draft of cold air that catches her attention, and her eyes snap to the mirror to find Ward standing in the doorway.

“Ward!” she exclaims, hurriedly switching off her hair dryer. “What—”

She’s expecting an apology for interrupting, perhaps a hurried explanation that there’s been some kind of emergency. She’s _not_ expecting him to close the door and step right up behind her, and her voice dies in her throat as he does so.

“We need to talk,” he says.

She sets her brush and her hair dryer down slowly, giving herself a moment to gather her composure. Once she’s feeling a bit more in control of herself, she turns to face him, fisting one hand in the knot of her towel.

“And it can’t wait until I’m dressed?” she asks.

“No,” he says, and steps even closer to her.

The Bus’ bathroom is tiny. There’s barely enough space for _one_ person—certainly not two—which means that, short of getting up onto the sink, there’s no way to put any distance between herself and Ward. She’s just trapped, the hard edge of the counter behind her and the solid warmth of Ward in front.

It’s a very distracting sensation—diverting, even—which is her only excuse for not stopping Ward as he pulls her towel away from her.

His eyes drag over her slowly, and she swallows. Absurdly, this—standing naked before him while he’s fully dressed, locked in a bathroom still warm from her shower—feels far more intimate than what happened between them two nights ago.

The memory of that night threatens to overwhelm her ( _again_ , as it does every time she allows herself to think of it), but she’s shocked out of it when Ward’s fingers trail over her hip.

Or rather, the dark bruises scattered there.

“These are pretty bad,” he says softly. His expression is entirely unreadable, but she can feel the tension in his other arm, bracing against the edge of the sink. “And they’re gonna get worse before they get better.”

“They’re just bruises,” she says, breath catching as his hand drifts lower. There are bruises on her thighs, inner and outer, as well. Not to mention her breasts, her neck, her stomach, her wrists—she is, in short, covered in evidence of his touch and his kiss.

There’s a throb between her thighs which started while she was showering, sliding soap gently over her marked-up skin, and his proximity—to say nothing of the way he’s tracing the bruises on her outer thigh—is only increasing it. She shifts against the sink, hoping he attributes her blush to his forwardness.

“You said I didn’t hurt you,” he says—accuses, really.

Ah. Perhaps that’s what’s darkening his eyes, then: remorse. He was very concerned, when she first presented the idea of sex as a means of lessening the berserker staff’s effect on him, about the possibility of harming her while in possession of enhanced strength.

“You didn’t,” she says.

She doesn’t quite have the words to convey how _refreshing_ it was, how _new_ , to be handled so roughly—to be treated as though she could _take_ such treatment, rather than a delicate piece of glass that might shatter at the slightest pressure. She herself has no idea why it affected her so strongly, why a grip that _should_ have hurt only increased her pleasure, and she can’t explain what she doesn’t understand.

So instead, in the face of his skeptical expression, she adds, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a very vocal person during sex. You’d have known if you were hurting me.”

Something sparks in his eyes.

“I did notice,” he says lowly. “But this…”

His gaze drops away from hers to give her another slow once-over.

“You could get my fingerprints from these,” he says, touch trailing back up her thigh. It’s a gross exaggeration, and she opens her mouth to say so, but he silences her with a sharp shake of his head. “Being rough is one thing. These are _mean_.”

Ward is an incredibly attractive man. There’s a whine trapped in her throat from nothing more than this, his very light touch and his very heavy gaze, and it takes her a moment to gather her thoughts enough to respond.

“They’re just bruises,” she says again, weakly.

“They’re not.” He leans into her a little, cupping her cheek with a gentle hand. “Let me make it up to you.”

She’s not entirely certain what it is he’s asking (demanding? His tone is just as hard to read as his face), but there’s a tight heat low in her abdomen and she can’t breathe for how little space is between them, so she finds herself nodding anyway.

“Thank you,” he says, and kisses her.

It’s nothing at all like his kisses of two nights ago. Those were harsh—punishing, even—while this one is slow and sweet. He’s still quite skillful, though, and she’s grateful for the sink’s support, because it’s no time at all before her knees are weak.

But it’s only a moment or two before she _loses_ the support of the sink, as Ward tugs her away from it. His hands bracketing her hips, he turns her and backs her up, and she’s distracted enough by the kiss—and the accompanying burning in her lungs—that she doesn’t have the presence of mind to wonder where they’re going. Not until her back hits the wet tile of the shower wall, at least.

“Ward,” she gasps, tearing her mouth away from his. “What—”

Her voice gives out on her as he kisses his way down her neck. Again, it’s nothing like before; there’s no bite behind it, no force—just soft presses of his lips to her skin. But the slightest pressure against the hickies he left last time is enough to send a bolt of pure desire straight to her core; she laces her fingers in his hair to hold him close, feels him smile against her skin.

He doesn’t stop when he reaches her shoulder. He kisses each and every one of the bruises and bites scattered across her collarbone, then keeps going, and by the time he reaches her breasts, she’s squirming against the knee he’s slotted between hers.

But it’s only a moment before he _removes_ that knee, and she bites back on a whine.

It's not a surprise, really. After all, there’s a significant difference in their heights, and the way he’s curled over her can’t possibly be comfortable. It only makes sense that he would want to even them out a bit—to pin her against the wall on his level and ease the strain—and he can hardly pick her up from his current position.

She’s half-right: he moves, but not to pick her up. Instead, he lowers himself to his knees.

“Ward,” she tries again, but he’s kissing his way down her stomach now. It’s obvious where this is going and she’s not even certain what she’s attempting to say, so she gives up on talking and simply lets herself _feel_.

The floor of the cubicle is still wet from her shower, but if Ward cares—or even notices—that his jeans are getting soaked, he gives no indication. The bruises on her hips are the worst, and he lingers over them, ensuring every inch of darkened skin receives the same amount of attention.

She doesn’t know how he’s getting her so wound up with such gentle treatment—wasn’t it only a moment ago that she was trying to put to words how much being touched like she’s fragile annoys her?—but he really, truly is. It’s driving her insane.

His mouth is so close but so _far_ from where she needs it, and desire is beginning to turn to desperation. She misses the pressure of his knee—she needs _something_ , some sort of easing, and he’s taking far, far too long to get there. She still has one hand in his hair, but her attempts to urge him to move are met only with a chuckle against her thigh.

Well, fine then. If he’s so intent on kissing _every single bruise_ …

She can’t bring herself to remove her hand from his hair. It’s a connection, somehow, a way to stay anchored to what he’s doing—a thought that makes no sense even to her, but no matter. She has another hand, after all, and she brings it to the crux of her thighs, slides her fingers between her almost embarrassingly wet folds, shudders at the _relief_ of it—

And then cries out, as Ward’s hand catches hers and pulls it away.

“Be patient,” he scolds. He kisses the inside of her wrist, and she’d swear there’s a direct line between her bruised skin and her core, because she feels the brush of his lips all the way down to her toes. “I’m getting there.”

“Get there _faster_ ,” she orders, breath hitching as he kisses the outside of her wrist. Bruises successfully tended, she’s expecting him to let go of her hand; instead, he keeps it clasped in his as he returns his attention to her outer thigh. “Ward!”

He ignores her. It seems to take _forever_ for him to finally move, to put his mouth on her where she wants it, and by the time he does, she’s so desperate she nearly cries at the first touch. She’s so focused on it—on _finally_ getting a little of what she needs—that she doesn’t even realize he’s moving her until it’s already happened, until he’s bearing most of her weight, her knee over his shoulders.

And thank goodness for that, because she was barely standing _before_.

He builds her up slowly, mouth just as gentle on her cunt as it was everywhere else. She both appreciates it—because she’s still a touch sore from two nights ago—and hates it—because her desperation is _overwhelming_.

She can’t bear it.

Her whole world narrows to sensation: his lips and his tongue, the cold tile against her back, the slowly coiling pressure low in her abdomen, his hair between her fingers. Her heart is pounding in her ears and she can’t quite catch her breath; she’s dizzy with it, with pleasure and _need_.

Minutes or hours into it, he finally releases her other hand in favor of sliding two fingers into her whilst sucking at her clit. The sensation shudders through her, a jolting _pulse_ of pure pleasure, and she slaps her hand against the wall, searching for purchase as the world goes hazy.

There’s nothing to grip, though, nothing but slippery tile beside and behind her and Ward beneath her. For lack of anything else, she buries her other hand in his hair, too, holds on tight as he drives her to the edge.

Every bruise on her body is throbbing, and considering the sheer _number_ of them, she feels like she’s pulsing all over. She’s vaguely aware that she’s speaking, nonsense babble of pleas interspersed with his name, but there’s no time to be embarrassed by her incoherence, because he crooks his fingers just _so_ and she’s gone.

Her orgasm drags on and on, until she can’t even whimper any longer, can’t even _move_. She might even pass out—certainly she can’t account for the time between Ward kneeling between her legs, coaxing her through the aftershocks, and Ward standing in front of her, strong hands on her hips supporting her.

“That—” Jemma drags in a breath, blinking away the spots in her vision. “—was amazing.”

Ward grins, wide and smug in a way she’s rarely seen from him.

“So, we’re okay?” he asks, releasing one hip in favor of tucking her hair behind her ear. “Amends successfully made?”

“No amends were necessary,” she says, because they really weren’t. “But we are definitely okay.”

“Good,” he says.

He sounds relieved, and he looks it, too, but there’s something in his eyes—

Oh. Of course.

“Or I am, at least,” she says. “But what about you?” She trails her fingers down his chest to toy with the button of his jeans, and he hisses in a breath. “You didn’t get a turn.”

He catches her wrists—gently—and pulls her hands away, shaking his head.

“This was about you,” he says, “not me.”

It’s an evasion, not a denial of his desperate state, and she smiles up at him.

“Well _I_ would very much like for _both_ of us to leave this encounter wholly satisfied,” she says. “And the others will be gone for hours yet, so…your bunk or mine?”

He wets his lips as his fingers flex around her wrists.

“You sure?” he asks.

It’s probably a bad idea. But he’s just given her the most amazing oral sex of her life, and combined with their encounter in the cargo bay, she’s fairly certain he now makes up the entire list of her top ten orgasms. It would be unkind to make him walk away in this state.

And, selfishly, she’s already greedy for more of him. She just doesn’t have it in her to resist temptation.

“Very.”

“In that case…” He grins again, even wider than before. “My bunk, definitely.”


End file.
